 Section 103 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 23, 1906, Chote and Twain, plead for Tuskegee. Brilliant audience cheers them and Booker Washington. Humorist wraps tax dodgers. Says everybody swears, especially off. Friends of Negro institution trying to raise $1,800,000. To give Booker T. Washington a good start toward collecting the $1,800,000 he wants to carry back from the north to Tuskegee Institute, Mark Twain, Joseph H. Chote, Robert C. Ogden, and Dr. Washington himself, spoken Carnegie Hall last night. Incidentally it was a silver jubilee celebration since Tuskegee Institute was founded in 1881. The big house was crowded to its utmost capacity, and there were as many more outside who would have gone in had there been room. The spectacle reminded one of the campaign days last November when District Attorney Jerome and his attendant spellbinders were packing Carnegie Hall. But last night it was by no means a gathering of the populace alone. Women in brilliant gowns, resplendent with jewels, and men in evening dress filled the boxes. Despite the avowed object of the meeting, to get money from the audience and others, there was an atmosphere of good humor and lightheartedness. Mark Twain's teachings were met with such volleys of laughter that the man who never grows old could hardly find intervals in which to deliver his precepts. That part of Mr. Clemens' address, which referred to wealthy men who swear off tax assessments, was applauded with a special fervor. The occupants of the boxes included Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Mrs. Henry H. Rogers, Mrs. Clarence H. McKay, Mrs. Morris K. Jessup, J. G. Phelps Stokes, Isaac N. Seligman, George Foster Peabody, John Crosby Brown, Carl Shurs, Mrs. W. H. Scheffelin, Mrs. William J. Scheffelin, Mrs. Joseph H. Chote, Mrs. Henry Villard, Nicholas Murray Butler, Mrs. Robert C. Ogden, Mrs. Cleveland H. Dodge, Mrs. Alfred Shaw, Mrs. Felix M. Washburn, Mrs. R. Fulton Cutting, Mrs. Collis P. Huntington, Mrs. Robert B. Mintham, Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, Mrs. Paul M. Warburg, and Mrs. Arthur Curtis James. A negro octet sang between the speeches, their songs were old-fashioned melodies and revival songs, and their deep, full voice filled the whole house. William J. Scheffelin opened the meeting by telling its object and urging that all the help possible be given to Dr. Washington. He announced that in April a special train would leave New York for Tuskegee and that the round-trip ticket would cost $50, covering all expenses. On this occasion, the 25th anniversary of the founding of Tuskegee will be celebrated at the school itself by speeches by Secretary of War Taft, President Elliott of Harvard, Bishop Galloway, and Andrew Carnegie. Chote praises Washington. We assemble tonight," said Mr. Chote, when Mr. Scheffelin presented him, to celebrate the silver jubilee of Tuskegee Institute, 25 years old today. The success of which, as a nucleus and center of negro education in the South, is the triumph and glory of Dr. Booker T. Washington. I believe he does not claim to be the originator of it. It began in 1881 in a shanty and thirty pupils. Now what do we behold? A great educational establishment with 2,300 acres and more than eight buildings, peculiarly fitted for the tasks they are supposed to assist. It has sent forth more than 6,000 pupils as examples to and teachers of the Negro race. It has now an enrollment of 1,500 pupils and an endowment fund of more than $1 million. Like all the other great educational institutions of today, the more it has and the more it wants, the more it gets and the more it can use. I read that in a recent speech Dr. Washington declared that he was proud of his race. I am sure his race is proud of him, and I know I can say that North and South are also proud of him. And there are few Americans on whom European nations look with such peculiar interest and sympathy as Dr. Washington. It was my pleasure to see him in my own hired house, laughter, in London, surrounded by English men and English women, who were delighted to make his acquaintance and listen to his words. Negro problem, a wide one. This tremendous Negro problem, which was left when slavery was abolished and will last much longer than slavery lasted, no more rests on the white people of the South than on the Negroes or on the white people of the North. It was forced upon the South by the irresistible force of the whole nation. In the South, they, white and Negro, have done their part well. I read in a book, which I hope everybody has read, by Mr. Murphy, Secretary of the Southern Education Board, that the illiteracy of the Negroes in the South has been wiped away more than one half since the war. How has it been accomplished? Out of the means of the Southern States, they have done nobly. By taxation, $109 million was raised between 1870 and 1900 for the education of Negroes. How many people in the South, like some people we have had here in New York, stood between the appropriation and the recipients I do not know, but it was a great achievement. None of the Tuskegee graduates is in an asylum. It is not the educated Negroes who make themselves enemies to the South. It is uneducated Negroes. The desire of these Tuskegee can satisfy. Integrity of the races. The maintenance of the integrity of the races, which, with the approval of both races, has formed the basis of Southern civilization, has given opportunity to Negro lawyers, Negro doctors, and ministers in every profession and industry, and the Negroes are making the most of it. Then Mr. Chote turned toward Mark Twain. If I were to present the next speaker as Samuel L. Clemens, he said, some would ask, who is he? But when I present him as Mark Twain, he could get no further. The applause which broke out lasted a full three minutes. I heard him speak at the dinner on his seventieth birthday, continued Mr. Chote, and the gist of his speech was that he had never done any work in his life. He said he had never worked at anything he didn't like, and so it wasn't work at all. He said that when he had an interesting job before him he lay in bed all day, and today I understand he has been in bed all day. When Mark Twain could be heard he said, Mark Twain's address, These habits of which Mr. Chote has told you are the very habits which have kept me young until I am seventy years old. I have lain in bed all day today, expect to lie in bed all day tomorrow, and will continue to lie in bed all day throughout the year. There is nothing so refreshing, nothing so comfortable, and nothing fits one so well for the kind of work which he calls pleasure. Mr. Chote has been careful not to pay me any compliments. It wasn't because he didn't want to, he just couldn't think of any. I came here in the responsible capacity of policemen to watch Mr. Chote. This is an occasion of grave and serious importance, and it seemed necessary for me to be present so that if he tried to work off any statements that required correction, reduction, refutation, or exposure there would be a tried friend of the public here to protect the house. But I can say in all frankness and gratitude that nothing of the kind has happened. He has not made one statement whose veracity fails to tally exactly with my own standard. I have never seen a person improve so. This does not make me jealous. It only makes me thankful. Thankful and proud, proud of a country that can produce such men, to such men, and all in the same century. We can't be with you always. We are passing away, passing away. Soon we shall be gone. And then, well, everything will have to stop, I reckon. It is a sad thought. But in spirit I shall still be with you. Chote too, if he can. Nothing to refute. There being nothing to explain, nothing to refute, nothing to excuse, there is nothing left for me to do now, but resume my natural trade, which is teaching. At Tuskegee they thoroughly ground the student in the Christian Code of Morals. They instill into him the indisputable truth that this is the highest and best of all systems of morals. That the nation's greatness, its strength, and its repute among the other nations, is the product of that system. That it is the foundation upon which rests the American character. That whatever is commendable, whatever is valuable in the individual American's character, is the flower and fruit of that seed. They teach him that this is true in every case, whether the man be a professing Christian or an unbeliever. For we have none but the Christian Code of Morals, and every individual is under its character building powerful influence and dominion from the cradle to the grave. He breathes it in with his breath. It is in his blood and bone. It is the web and woof and fiber of his mental and spiritual heredities and ineradicable. And so every born American among the eighty millions, let his creed or destitution of creed be what it may, is indisputably a Christian to this degree, that his moral constitution is Christian. Two codes of morals. All this is true, and no student will leave Tuskegee ignorant of it. Then what will he lack under this head? What is there for me to teach him under this head? That he may possibly not acquire there, or may acquire in not sufficiently emphasized form. Why, this large fact, this important fact, that there are two separate and distinct kinds of Christian morals. So separate, so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more kin to each other than are archangels and politicians. The one kind is Christian private morals, the other is Christian public morals. The loyal observance of Christian private morals has made this nation what it is. A clean and upright people in its private domestic life. An honest and honorable people in its private commercial life. No alien nation can claim superiority over it in these regards. No critic, foreign or domestic, can challenge the validity of this truth. During 363 days in the year, the American citizen is true to his Christian private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character at its best and highest. Then, in the other two days of the year, he leaves his Christian private morals at home, and carries his Christian public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous worth. Political morality. Without a blush, he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is his party's Moses. Without compunction he will vote against the best man in the whole land if he is on the other ticket. Every year in a number of cities and states, he helps to put corrupt men in office. Every year he helps to extend the corruption wider and wider. Year after year he goes on gradually rotting the country's political life. Whereas if he would but throw away his Christian public morals and carry his Christian private morals to the polls, he could promptly purify the public service and make the possession of office a high and honorable distinction, and one to be coveted by the very best men the country could furnish. But now, well, now he contemplates his unpatriotic work and sighs and grieves and blames every man but the right one, which is himself. As to tax dodgers, once a year he lays aside his Christian private morals and hires a ferryboat and piles up his bonds in a warehouse in New Jersey for three days and gets out his Christian public morals and goes to the tax office and holds up his hand and swears he wishes he may never, never if he's got a cent in the world so help him. The next day the list appears in the papers, a column and a quarter of names in fine print, and every man in the list a billionaire and a member of a couple of churches. I know all those people, I have friendly, social and criminal intercourse with the whole of them. They never miss a sermon when they are so as to be around, and they never miss swearing-off day whether they are so as to be around or not. The innocent man cannot remain innocent in the disintegrating atmosphere of this thing. I used to be an honest man. I am crumbling. No, I have crumbled. When they assessed me at seventy-five thousand dollars a fortnight ago, I went out and tried to borrow the money and couldn't. Then when I found they were letting a whole crop of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me, I was hurt. I was indignant and said, this is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself. In that moment, in that memorable moment, I began to crumble. Mark Twain disintegrates. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I was become just a mere moral sandpile, and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and experienced deacons, and swore off every rag of personal property I've got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and what is left of my wig. Those tax officers were moved. They were profoundly moved. They had long been accustomed to seeing hardened old grafters act like that, and they could endure the spectacle, but they were expecting better things of me, a chartered professional moralist, and they were saddened. I fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and I should have fallen in my own, except that I had already struck bottom, and there wasn't any place to fall to. Does a gentleman swear off? At Tuskegee they will jump to misleading conclusions from insufficient evidence, along with Dr. Parkhurst, and they will deceive the student with the superstition that no gentleman ever swears. Look at those good millionaires. Aren't they gentlemen? Well, they swear. Only once a year maybe, but there's enough bulk in it to make up for the lost time. And do they lose anything by it? No, they don't. They save enough in three minutes to support the family seven years. When they swear, do we shudder? No, unless they say damn. Then we do. It shrivels us all up. Yet we ought not to feel so about it, because we all swear, everybody, including the ladies, including Dr. Parkhurst, that strong and brave and excellent citizen, but superficially educated, for it is not the word that is the sin, it is the spirit, back of the word. When an irritated lady says oh, the spirit back of it is damn, and that is the way it is going to be recorded against her. It always makes me so sorry when I hear a lady swear like that, if she says damn, and says it in an amiable, nice way, it isn't going to be recorded at all. The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman, if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way. The historian John Fisk, whom I knew well and loved, was a spotless and most noble and upright Christian gentleman, and yet he swore once, not exactly that maybe, still he, but I will tell you about it. One day, when he was deeply immersed in his work, his wife came in, much moved and profoundly distressed, and said, I am sorry to disturb you, John, but I must, for this is a serious matter, and needs to be attended to at once. Then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation against their little son. She said, he has been saying his Aunt Mary is a fool, and his Aunt Martha is a damned fool. Mr. Fisk, reflected upon the matter a minute, then said, oh, well, it's about the distinction I should make between them myself. Mr. Washington, I beg you to convey these teachings to your great and prosperous and most beneficent educational institution, and add them to the prodigal, mental and moral riches wherewith you equip your fortunate protégés for the struggle of life. Robert C. Ogden, after his introduction by Mr. Chote, said that before he began his formal address, which was financial arousment, of the occasion, he wanted to answer Mark Twain's remarks on profanity. I want to say, said Mr. Ogden, that my friend's allusions to the ethics of profanity are not at all original. I knew all about them years ago, and he would not have known as much as he does had he never lived in Hartford. I remember hearing a distinguished Puritan say once there, banging his fist on the desk in front of him during the debate, that he'd be damned if he would allow such a proposition to go through. In answer to this, Henry Clay Trumbull said that it was fine to see a man who could say damned with such profound reverence. Mr. Ogden then went on to tell the needs of Tuskegee. He said that the best intelligence of the country, north and south, admitted the peculiar educational duty that was owing to the Negroes that had become a part of the population of the nation. APPLAWS FOR WASHINGTON Mr. Ogden said that there were three distinct appeals. An added income of $90,000 a year was needed. An added endowment of $1,800,000 was essential. And a heating plant, to cost $34,000, was necessary. Just before Booker T. Washington entered the hall, a messenger boy handed him a note from Thomas Dixon Jr., in which the writer said he would contribute $10,000 to Tuskegee if Mr. Washington would state at the meeting that he did not desire social equality for the Negro and that Tuskegee was opposed to the amalgamation of the races. When asked what he had to say on the subject, Mr. Washington said, I will make no answer, whatever. I have nothing to say. Mr. Washington got a fine reception when he came forward to speak, and there was great applause when he said in the course of his address, One point we might consider a settled. We are through experimenting and speculating as to where the ten millions of black people are to live. We have reached the ineligible determination that we are going to remain here in America and the greater part of us are going to remain for all time in the southern states. In this connection I do not hesitate to say that from my point of view the great body of our people find a more encouraging opportunity in the south than elsewhere. Since we are to forever constitute a part of citizenship of this country, there is but one question to be answered. Shall we be among the best citizens or among the worst? Every race of people should be judged by its best type, not by its lowest, said Mr. Washington. One has no right to pass judgment upon a people until he has taken the pains to see something of their progress and after they have had a reasonable chance. Whenever we have been able to reach the people through education they have improved morally at a rapid pace and crime has decreased. After making diligent inquiry we cannot find a single man or woman who holds a diploma from the Hampton Institute in Virginia or the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in the walls of a penitentiary. No two groups of people can live side by side where one is in ignorance and poverty without its condition affecting the other. The black man must be lifted or the white man will be injured in his moral and spiritual life. The degradation of the one will mean the degradation of the other. I do not overlook the seriousness of the problem that is before us, nor do I set any limits upon the growth of my race. In my opinion it is the most important and far-reaching problem that the nation has had before it. But you cannot make equally good citizens where in one part of the country a child has a dollar and fifty cents expended for his education and in another part of the country another child has twenty dollars spent for his enlightenment. The Negro in many ways has proved his worth and loyalty to this country. What he now asks is that through such institutions as Hampton, Fisk and Tuskegee he shall be given the chance to render high an intelligent service to our country in the future. I have faith that such an opportunity will be given him. End of Section 103, January 23, 1906, Chote and Twain, Plead for Tuskegee. Read by John Greenman. Section 104 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. January 30, 1906. Views of Mark Twain on being in Congress. Delightful as a representative to slap Uncle Joe's back. Joy, too, of swapping lies. The smiling philosopher and the speaker try that and endorse it. The chill of the Senate. Special to the New York Times. Washington, January 29. Mark Twain thinks he would like to be a senator, although there are moments when he would like to be a representative. For, he says, you can slap the speaker on the back and call him Uncle Joe. That is, some people can do that. But he doesn't know of anybody in the Senate who can slap the vice president on the back and call him Uncle Charlie. At least Mr. Twain hasn't met any senator yet who has ever done that. Still, he doesn't know all the senators yet. He admits that. And there may be some who can do it. Mr. Twain expects, if he stays here a few hours longer, to know all the senators. He has made fair progress since he came. Not that this is Mr. Twain's first visit to Washington. He has been here several times, but never before has he felt that he was a really distinguished person. This time people have noticed him, he says. On Saturday night he attended the gridiron dinner and noticed a great many people whose pictures he had seen. He is a little timid, but he easily made some acquaintances there, one of whom was this Mr. Cannon already referred to. Mr. Cannon seemed to like him, and Mr. Twain was pleased at that. They struck up such a friendship that Mr. Twain invited Mr. Cannon to come and have luncheon with him at his hotel on Sunday. On that day at one o'clock Mr. Cannon showed up, not in his famous home-spun dress, but in another suit. Mr. Twain told Mr. Cannon he was disappointed, and Mr. Cannon promised to wear the home-spun suit the next time he met Mr. Twain. They had a good time, and ate many things. And Mr. Harvey, a friend of Mr. Twain's, who prints the things Mr. Twain writes, was there too. When Mr. Cannon went away he asked Mr. Twain to come and see him at his office at the foot of Pennsylvania Avenue and see how he did his work. So Mr. Twain showed up there this afternoon, but he did not see Mr. Cannon do any work, at least not much. He and Mr. Cannon sat in the speaker's room and told stories all the time. Mr. Cannon must have got interested in what Mr. Twain had to say, for after a while he put his feet on the top of his table and crossed his thumbs, and that is always a sign that Mr. Cannon is interested. Mr. Twain sat alongside him and talked in a slow drawl. Mr. Cannon talked fully as much as Mr. Twain, and the philosopher enjoyed hearing what he said. What did we talk about? said Mr. Twain afterward. Well, we just swapped lies. The speaker was not the only man Mr. Twain saw. He met a great many senators and people like that. And, said Mr. Twain, there were a good many flights of imagination in what those people said, but the speaker and I stuck pretty close to the truth. He reflected on this for a moment and then seemed to fear that he had been too hasty. At least, he amended. I did. I don't know whether or not the speaker stretched a point or two. Mr. Twain was asked how he came to go to the Capitol. Well, he said, I wanted to see my old friend Joe Cannon. Is Mr. Cannon an old friend of yours, he was asked. I call him an old friend, explained Mr. Twain, because I met him for the first time on Saturday night, and a man you meet on a Saturday night is always an old friend. I sat beside him at the gridiron dinner, and I gradually came to have a good opinion of him. If the dinner had lasted half an hour longer, I think we would have been calling each other Joe and Sam. Samuel is Mr. Twain's family name, the one his family uses. But it did not, added Mr. Twain, and so I have not called him Joe yet. Perhaps I will the next time I come. Mr. Twain and Mr. Cannon took luncheon together, and Mr. Twain looked the Senate over and saw more people whose pictures he had seen. Then he went back to his hotel and gave a dinner to a few friends. He does not know when he will go back. End of Section 104 January 30, 1906 Views of Mark Twain on Being in Congress Read by John Greenman Section 105 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 4 1900-1906 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Read by John Greenman February 8, 1906 Twain on Rockefeller Jr. He's all right, but as to his knowledge of veracity, well... Mark Twain declared last night that he had never told a lie in his life, up to that moment. Then he said he was glad to be present. Mr. Clemens was a guest at the dinner and entertainment given at the Press Club in memory of Charles Dickens under the auspices of the American branch of the Dickens Fellowship. George Cary Eggleston, honorary president of the Dickens Fellowship, was toastmaster. John D. Rockefeller Jr., said Mr. Clemens, told his Sunday school class a few weeks ago all about veracity and why it was better that everybody should always keep a plentiful supply on hand. And I want to say to you that among the hundreds of letters I receive each week many of them have suggested that I ought to attend Mr. Rockefeller's class. I know Mr. Rockefeller very well. He is a fine fellow and competent in many ways, but as to his knowledge of veracity, well, he is only 35 years old and I am 70. I have been familiar with veracity twice as long as he has. Mr. Clemens asserted that the world at large had missed the point of the story little George Washington told his father about the Cherry Tree episode. The boy did not need to tell his father that he could not tell a lie because he could have done so had he felt like it and he would not have had to attend a Rockefeller class to teach him now. The pith of the story was the astonishment of George's father to find that he had a son who had a chance to tell a lie and didn't do it. End of Section 105, February 8, 1906 Twain on Rockefeller Jr., read by John Greenman. Section 106 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. February 17, 1906 Ends of the Earthers for Gather Here Again and astonish Mark Twain with some very brief reports. He and others reminisce. The author tells how he filled Cooper Union 39 years ago 150 globetrotters at dinner. Once every year a body of men of prime fellowship hailing from the four corners of the earth, but speaking the Anglo-Saxon tongue, gather in New York to see each other, shake hands and say, How'd you do? They call their organization the Ends of the Earth Club. The name typifies their clan for it is to very jumping-off places of the earth that its membership of men in every known profession reaches. And if the fun they had at their third annual dinner at the Savoy Hotel last night didn't penetrate to the ends of the globe, it was the sole fault of modern methods of communication. The Ends of the Earth Club, of which Mark Twain is the honorary head with Rudyard Kipling and Admiral George Dewey and members of the honorary council, was formed three years ago by globetrotters of New York and elsewhere in the world, whose idea was to dine together once every twelve months and exchange felicitations. Here are its principles. Members, good fellows with no access to grind who speak our language. Lodge, wherever the four ways meet the north and south and east and west trails. Greeting, where do you come from? I come from the ends of the earth. What for? To speak the language. Mark Twain was the honorable guest and made the main speech at the dinner last night and sat next to General James H. Wilson, who although the speeches were all informal, acted as toastmaster. Mr. Clemens did not arrive at the dinner until ten o'clock. When he did appear the ends of the earthers rose and sang for he's a jolly good fellow. Now the ends of the earth club has no regular quarters and has no business to transact, but at each dinner it goes through the mock form of receiving reports from its secretary and treasurer. The report of the secretary, responded Secretary C. Bowyer Bow, indicating the menu card, is already in cold type before you. It is in order to dispose of it, said General Wilson. We've already done so," replied Mr. Bow. Then came the report of the treasurer, Charles Triller. To present a report these days is to throw a bomb. Look at the Panama and insurance matters. Mr. Triller was then unanimously re-elected until he had had time to make up alleged deficits. Has any member of the club an objection to anything that has happened during the dinner? asked General Wilson. Yes," replied Professor Edward S. Morse, jumping from his seat. I enter objection to the orchestra. I move that the next dinner we have a Japanese band with geisha girls. That's it," agreed a dozen members yelling at once. The geisha girls. We'll have the next dinner tomorrow night. General Wilson then opened the speechmaking by remarking that he hoped that the day was near when everybody on earth would speak the English tongue. When Richard Crocker was coming over a few years ago, someone asked him how he stood on the Philippines question. I am an anti-imperialist," he replied. What do you mean by that, was asked. I mean that I'd get busy quick and kill every beggar who doesn't speak the English language. These are my sentiments," said General Wilson. Captain W. Wyndham, British consulate Boston, echoed the principle. A few years ago, when you'd walk up to an attendant at a railroad station in Inja, and asked for the stationmaster, you'd get the reply, Stationmaster, eat thy rice. All of which would mean that the stationmaster was eating rice. Today, when you ask the same man the same question, you get the reply, the stationmaster is enjoying his post-prandial repost and repose. The English language is spreading, and we Anglo-Saxons will soon control the world. Professor Morse talked about civilization. Civilization, he said, doesn't mean subways, skyscrapers, automobiles, and sixty-mile-a-minute railroad trains. It means good manners, gentlemen, and sympathy among society. That's what the Japanese have, and that's where we are lacking. Colonel T. L. Livermore and Captain Thomas Franklin of the Army made short talks. Then F. Hopkinson Smith, a native of Virginia, told several Negro dialect stories, and explained how he had come north in the early sixties. I'm a New Yorker, and you know all New Yorkers have these residences. One is the place where they vote, another where they pay taxes, and another where they sue for divorce. Mark Twain, in beginning his talk, said he never intended delivering another speech or another lecture, but that when it came to reminiscences, he would take care of his share. I don't quite get the hang of this club, he said. You don't know what the treasurer's report furnishes, except that it doesn't furnish anything. I might, just as well, be in the SPCA. I don't know whether you adopted that method, or whether the society for the propagation of cruelty to animals adopted it. Laughter. Only you do come out better than they do. Mr. Clemens then went on to tell about Mulberry Sellers, to whom General Wilson had alluded in his introduction. When I was writing the book, he said, I had great trouble with Mulberry Sellers. I had the man's name written originally as Mulberry Sellers. A friend told me I ought to change it. Make it Escal Sellers, he advised. But I'm afraid, I replied, an Escal Sellers may be living and we may get into trouble. However, I made it Escal Sellers, and one day a man from Philadelphia, a stately and cultivated gentleman, approached me. Sir, he said, my name is Escal Sellers. I'll give you fifteen minutes to take my name out of that book. We did it, but that didn't end the trouble, for a Mulberry Sellers turned up in Wisconsin, one on the Wabash, and others from various parts of the country. Mr. Clemens then told of his first lecture delivered at the Cooper Institute thirty-nine years ago. I met a man on the streets of New York a few weeks ago, said he, he was my old friend Fuller, ninety years gone and gray-headed. I was glad to see him, and the moment I laid eyes upon him, I was brought back to my first lecture in New York at Cooper Institute. Fuller was the man who had proposed it. I demurred. Nobody knows me here, Fuller, I said, and the thing will be a failure. No such thing, he argued, will fill the house at one dollar ahead. I was young enough to be deceived by his flamboyant talk, and immediately had dreams of filling the house at one dollar ahead. He suggested Cooper Institute. I've been there once, and don't want to go again. They advertised me as the eloquent and celebrated Mark Twain. I hung up in the city buses great bunches of flimsy cards advertising my coming lecture. The cards were to be pulled down and read by anybody interested. I saw them, and got to haunting those buses. I rode up and down, up and down, through this town of New York, watching with beating heart and hoping that someone would pull one of those sheets. I never saw anybody do it. I finally advised Fuller to flood the city with paper, and we did so. We sent out barrels of complimentary tickets. When the eventful night came, the streets were blocked with struggling men and women. The house was jammed with people. I felt flattered, for it was my first lecture in the East. It was a magnificent triumph. We had a superb time, and we took in thirty-five dollars. I remarked about this to Fuller the other day. No, he said. It was three hundred and fifty dollars. I didn't hold that against him and ask him for the money, because it happened a long time ago. End of Section 106. February 17, 1906. Ends of the Earthers for Gather Here Again. Read by John Greenman. Section 107 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part IV. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. February 18, 1906. For a monument to Fulton. Plans to commemorate the invention of the steamboat. The Robert Fulton Memorial Association, which was organized recently to erect a suitable monument to the inventor of the steamboat, and possibly a tomb for him in the centennial year of the first sailing of the Claremont, the pioneer steamer, has been incorporated at Albany. The incorporators are Samuel L. Clemens, our Fulton cutting, Andrew F. Burley, General Frederick D. Grant, Colonel H. O. S. Helstead, United States Army, Hugh Gordon Miller, and others. General Grant has consented to serve as temporary president of the association, but as he feels that his military duties would prevent him from devoting as much of his time to the work as he would wish, he has asked that someone else be selected permanent president. The incorporators are now considering three men of national reputation for the office. Mr. Miller said yesterday that as yet no site had been selected for the memorial, nor had its architectural features been determined upon. In a general way it is intended to have the monument erected on some suitable spot overlooking the Hudson. It is especially desired, said Mr. Miller, to lay the cornerstone in 1907, if possible. That year will be the one hundredth anniversary of the Claremont's maiden trip. The committee has no doubt, if this be done, that the monument will be completed in time for the three hundredth anniversary celebration in honor of Henry Hudson. Mr. Claremont's, in accepting membership on the committee, wrote the following letter. I am sure that, but for his genius and energy, steam navigation would have remained in the egg centuries longer than it did. He made the vacant oceans and the idle rivers useful after the unprejudiced had been wondering for a hundred million years what they were for. He found these properties a liability. He left them an asset. It is the peculiar honor and privilege of our commercializing age to estimate this majestic service at its splendid and rightful value. The monument is deserved, and it will be built. Mark Twain Among those appointed to serve on the general and executive committees of the association are John Jacob Astor, William Bayard Cutting, Austin G. Fox, W. H. Fletcher, Bishop Coagitor David H. Greer, Governor Higgins, Admiral George W. Melville, John E. Parsons, E. E. Alcott, George L. Rives, James Stillman, Horace White, and George Foster Peabody. End of Section 107, February 18, 1906, For a Monument to Fulton. Read by John Greenman. Section 108 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part IV. 1900-1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. February 20, 1906. Twain's latest maxim. To be good is noble. To teach others nobler and no trouble. Having had himself recently photographed, Mark Twain has sent one of the pictures to President Frank Lawrence of the Lotus Club with this note. Take note of this, Frank Lawrence, old friend of mine. To be good is noble. But to teach others how to be good is nobler and no trouble. S. L. Clemens. End of Section 108, February 20, 1906. Twain's latest maxim. Read by John Greenman. Section 109 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part IV. 1900-1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. February 21, 1906. Twain the Greatest. In English literature says Brander Matthews. A Columbia tea for him. Samuel L. Clemens, Mark Twain, was the guest of honor at a Columbia University tea held yesterday afternoon in Earl Hall. More than 900 students greeted Mr. Clemens and Sir Casper Purden-Clark, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Edward Robinson, the assistant director, who were also guests. At the close of the reception the students gathered outside Earl Hall and cheered Mr. Clemens to the echo. The tea was more generally attended than any other hell this year. Professor Brander Matthews, earlier in the day, while lecturing to his class in American literature, called Mr. Clemens the greatest figure in English literature. Professor Matthews declared that there is no man even in England who can be compared to Mark Twain as a master of the language. End of Section 109, February 21, 1906. Twain the Greatest. Read by John Greenman. Section 110 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. March 5, 1906. Police, hustle crowd awaiting Mark Twain. Bungle at the Majestic Theater angers YMCA men. Wouldn't open the doors. Mr. Clemens gives some advice about the treatment of corporations and talks about gentlemen. Members of the West Side branch of the Young Men's Christian Association found that entering the Majestic Theater yesterday afternoon, to hear and address by Mark Twain, had a close resemblance to a football match. No one was injured, but for a few minutes the police were hustling the crowd backward and forward by sheer force. A mounted man was sent to push his way through the thickest of the press, and the jam was perilous. The doors of the theater should have been opened at three o'clock, and about three hundred persons were there at that time. It was an orderly crowd of young men with a sprinkling of elderly ones, but Captain Daley of the West 47th Street Station would not allow them to be admitted until he had summoned the reserves. It took twenty minutes for these to arrive, and every moment the crush grew greater. Still there was no disorder and the police, as they formed into line, had to face nothing more dangerous than a little good-humored chaff. The crowd was ranged in a rough column facing the main doors of the lobby. The young men's Christian Association authorities came out several times and asked the Captain to allow the doors to be opened. If you do it, I'll take away my men, and there'll be a lot of people hurt or killed," he replied. I know how to handle crowds! Then he proceeded to handle the crowds. He tried to swing the long, solid line up against the southwestern side of Columbus Circle and forced them in by the side entrance of the lobby instead of the one they faced. First he sent a mounted man right through the column. The patrolmen followed, and in a moment the orderly gathering was hustled and thrust in all directions. Captain Daley's next maneuver was to open the side door. The crowd surged up, but he had them pushed back and closed the door again. The crowd was utterly bewildered. Then the young men's Christian Association authorities opened one half of the door on their own responsibility. Through this narrow passage the crowd squeezed. The plate glass in the half that was closed was shattered to atoms, and the men surged forward. A few coats were torn, but in spite of the way in which they had been handled, everybody kept his temper. If there had been any disorderly element present nothing could have avoided serious accidents. In the end all but five hundred gained admission. Hold police responsible. At the opening of the meeting the Reverend Dr. Charles P. Fagnani, the Chairman, said, The management desires to disclaim all responsibility for what has happened. Cheers. The matter was taken out of their hands by the police. Hisses. We wanted to open the doors earlier, but our lords and masters, the police, took the matter into their own hands and settled it in their own way. Hisses. You have been accustomed, long enough, to being brutally treated by the police, and I do not see why you should mind it. A voice, you're right. Someday you will take matters into your own hands and will decide that the police shall be the servants of the citizens. At the end of the meeting Charles F. Powleson, Secretary of the West Side Branch, stated he had been asked to submit a resolution condemning the action of the police, but it had been decided it was better not to do so. Mark Twain was introduced as a man well worth being clubbed to hear. He was greeted with a storm of applause that lasted over a minute. I thank you for this signal recognition of merit, he said. I have been listening to what has been said about citizenship. You complain of the police. You created the police. You are responsible for the police. They must reflect you, their masters. Consider that before you blame them. Citizenship is of the first importance in a land where a body of citizens can change the whole atmosphere of politics, as has been done in Philadelphia. There is less graft there than there used to be. I was going to move to Philadelphia, but it is no place for enterprise now. Dr. Russell spoke of organization. I was an organization once myself for twelve hours and accomplished things I could never have done otherwise. When they say step lively, remember it is not an insult from a conductor to you personally, but from the president of the road to you, an embodiment of American citizenship. When the insult is flung at your old mother and father, it shows the meanness of the omnipotent president who could stop it if he would. Mark Twain got the state room. I was an organization once. I was traveling from Chicago with my publisher and stenographer. I always traveled with a bodyguard and engaged a state room on a certain train. For above all its other conveniences, the state room gives the privilege of smoking. When we arrived at the station, the conductor told us he was sorry the car with our state room was left off. I said, you are under contract to furnish a state room on this train. I am in no hurry. I can stay here a week at the road's expense. It'll have to pay my expenses and a little over. Then the conductor called a grandee and after some argument he went and bundled some meek people out of the state room, told them something not strictly true, and gave it me. About eleven o'clock the conductor looked in on me and was very kind and winning. He told me he knew my father-in-law. It was much more respectable to know my father-in-law than me in those days. Then he developed his game. He was very sorry the car was only going to Harrisburg. They had telegraphed to Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and couldn't get another car. He threw himself on my mercy. But to him I only replied, then you had better buy the car. I had forgotten all about this when some time after Mr. Thompson of the Pennsylvania heard I was going to Chicago again and wired I am sending my private car. Clemens cannot ride on an ordinary car. He costs too much. Definition of a gentleman. Mark Twain went on to speak of the man who left ten thousand dollars to disseminate his definition of a gentleman. He denied that he had ever defined one, but said if he did he would include the mercifulness, fidelity, and justice the scripture read at the meeting spoke of. He produced a letter from William Dean Howells and said, He writes he is just sixty-nine, but I have known him longer than that. I was born to be afraid of dying, not of getting old, he says. Well, I'm the other way. It's terrible getting old. You gradually lose things and become troublesome. People try to make you think you are not, but I know I'm troublesome. Then he says no part of life is so enjoyable as the eighth decade. That's true. I've just turned into it, and I enjoy it very much. If old men were not so ridiculous, why didn't he speak for himself? But, he goes on, they are ridiculous and they are ugly. I never saw a letter with so many errors in it. Ugly. I was never ugly in my life. Forty years ago I was not so good-looking. A looking-glass then lasted me three months. Now I can wear it out in two days. You've been up in Hartford, burying poor old Patrick. I suppose he was old too, says Mr. Howells. No, he was not old. Patrick came to us thirty-six years ago, a brisk, lithe young Irishman. He was as beautiful in his graces as he was in his spirit, and he was as honest a man as ever lived. For twenty-five years he was our coachman, and if I were going to describe a gentleman in detail, I would describe Patrick. At my own request I was his pallbearer with our old gardener. He drove me and my bride so long ago. As the little children came along he drove them too. He was all the world to them, and for all in my house he had the same feelings of honour, honesty, and affection. He was sixty years old, ten years younger than I. Howells suggests he was old, and he was not old. He had the same gracious and winning ways to the end. Patrick was a gentleman, and to him I would apply the lines, So may I be courteous to men faithful to friends, true to my God, a fragrance to the path I trod. When inquiries were made last night at the Westside Branch as to whether a complaint of the action of the police would be made by the association to Commissioner Bingham, it was said to be improbable that any official action would be taken. End of Section 110. March 5, 1906. Police hustle crowds awaiting Mark Twain. Read by John Greenman. Section 111 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part 4. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by John Greenman. March 9, 1906. Twain's waning conscience. No more left than a millionaire, he says, at Putzel Dinner. Four hundred members of the Freundschaft Club met at their quarters, Park Avenue and 72nd Street last night, to do honour to their late President Charles Putzel on his appointment as tax commissioner. Among those who were asked to meet him all were officers, or ex-officers, except Mark Twain. The Chairman, Julius J. Frank, explained that the humorist was king of all hearts and all affection. Mayor McClellan sent a letter of regret. Mr. Putzel remarked that when Mayor McClellan appointed him to office, the members of the Freundschaft evidently assumed that he was selected to reduce the assessments on the club. The dinner was set three weeks before the close of swearing-in time. Then the club could sing, What is it to us if taxes rise and fall? Thanks to our Putzel we pay none at all. After Sr. Campanari had sung the Torridor song, Attorney General Mayer was introduced. Then ex-controller Grout assured the new tax commissioner that if he needed criticism he had only to assess the journal, the world, the sun, the herald, and the eagle at their true value. Mark Twain, who received an ovation, said, Mr. Putzel is related to me in a very tender way through taxes. They are a sore subject to me, and I was glad to hear there was any foreign product untaxable in America except the answer to prayer. When I went to his office and saw Putzel in the receipt of perjury, I recognized him right away. Years ago I met him in a bookstore. I asked him the discount of a book for a publisher. He said forty percent. I asked him the discount to an author. He jotted down another forty percent. What was it to clergy forty percent again? Well, I said, I was only on my way there kind of studying, so he put down twenty percent without a smile. I was in despair and asked him for ten off as a member of the human race. He never moved a muscle, but as I left the store called me back for the book forty cents that was coming to me. I hoped I might get something from him now as tax commissioner. I put up my hand and made a statement. It was pain and grief to me, for I was brought up in the pious circles of Missouri, but a year in New York had left me with no more conscience than a millionaire. I would like to compliment him anyway, for I may get relief next year. Attorney General Mayer suggested I might be a Supreme Court judge. I can't be that, for I know nothing of the administration of justice, but I understand from his speech he is the propagator of crime for the whole state, and as I am reasonably familiar with crime, I might have his job. End of Section 111. March 9, 1906. Twain's waning conscience. Read by John Greenman. Section 112 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. March 12, 1906. Carnegie assaults the spelling book to pay the cost of reforming English orthography. Campaign about to begin. Board named, with headquarters here, local societies throughout the country. Announcement was made yesterday that an organization, including prominent men of affairs as well as men of letters, has been formed to urge the simplification of English spelling. This new body is called the Simplified Spelling Board. It will appeal to all who, for educational or practical reasons, wish to make English spelling easier to learn. Andrew Carnegie has undertaken to bear the expense of the organization. Mr. Carnegie has long been convinced that English might be made the world language of the future, and thus one of the influences leading to universal peace. And he believes that the chief obstacle to its speedy adoption is to be found in its contradictory and difficult spelling. The Simplified Spelling Board contains some 30 members living in various parts of the Union. Some of them are authors of wide reputation. Some are professed scholars connected with leading universities. Some are editors of the foremost American dictionaries. Some are men distinguished in public life, and some are men of affairs prominent in civil life. The membership is not yet complete, but it now includes Chancellor Andrews of the University of Nebraska, Justice Brewer of the United States Supreme Court, President Butler of Columbia University, O. C. Blackmore of Chicago, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Dr. Melville Dewey, Dr. Isaac K. Funk, editor and publisher of the Standard Dictionary, Lyman J. Gage, ex-secretary of the Treasury, Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education and editor of Webster's International Dictionary, Professor George Hempel of the University of Michigan, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Holt, Professor William James of Harvard, President Jordan of Leyland-Stanford University, Professor Thomas R. Launsbury of Yale, Professor Francis A. March of Lafayette, Professor Brander Matthews of Columbia, Dr. Benjamin E. Smith, editor and Dr. Charles P. G. Scott, etymological editor of the Century Dictionary, President H. H. Seedley of the Iowa State Normal School, Cedar Falls, Colonel Charles E. Sprague, President of the Union Dime Savings Institution, Professor Calvin Thomas of Columbia, Dr. William Hayes Ward, editor of The Independent, and President Woodward of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The establishment of the Simplified Spelling Board is the result of an effort made within the last year to obtain the use, by men of position, of certain simplified spellings adopted some years ago by the National Educational Association and now used by several important publications. The response to this request was cordial. Hundreds of signatures were received, pledging the writers to use these simpler forms in their personal correspondence. The members of the Simplified Spelling Board believe that the time is now ripe for a forward movement. They do not intend to urge any violent alteration in the appearance of familiar words. They will not advance any extreme theories. They will not expect to accomplish their task in a day or in a year. They wish, in brief, to expedite that process of simplification which has been going on in English in spite of the opposition of conservatives ever since the invention of printing, notably in the omission of silent and useless letters. The immediate activities of the Simplified Spelling Board will be directed by an executive committee chosen from the members residing in New York, and from this office the campaign of education will be conducted by a competent staff. Local societies will be organized wherever a group of willing workers can be gathered together. Comprehensive plans are being mapped out, which will take years for their full accomplishment. End of Section 112. March 12, 1906. Carnegie Assaults the Spelling Book. Read by John Greenman. Section 113 of Mark Twain and the New York Times. Part 4. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. March 23, 1906. Rockefeller Jr. There, in spite of new air. Talks of parental burdens at the Bible-class reunion. Mark Twain sends letter. Timothy L. Woodruff says, Pernicious tendencies in business are not in life insurance alone. The responsibilities of fatherhood were mentioned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. before a church full of people last night. He didn't say much about them, but what he did say evoked long applause. Though he'd been the father of a son not quite a day, Mr. Rockefeller said the responsibilities were sufficient excuse for not making a good speech. Mark Twain and Martin W. Littleton, two honorary members invited to speak, did not appear. The chairman read a note from Mark Twain. Here is what the humorist said. I am sorry I am not able to be at the meeting of honorary members this evening. My doctor said that if I were a young man, instead of the Methuselah of American literature, I might come to no harm by attending. If that was a compliment, I shall find it in the bill. There ought to be a law against such graft as that. End of Section 113, March 23, 1906, Rockefeller Jr. there, in spite of new air, read by John Greenman. Section 114 of Mark Twain and the New York Times, Part IV, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. March 27, 1906, never too ill for a story. Mark Twain's only comment on Brooklyn's edict against his works. There is a letter over in Brooklyn signed by Samuel L. Clemens, a sad man living at 21 Fifth Avenue. Mr. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, has been ill for a week with a cold which threatened him with pneumonia. Yesterday he was said to be better, but he did not feel well enough to receive interviewers and explain to them how it had happened that the Brooklyn Public Libraries, through Librarian Frank P. Hill, had put on the restricted list, both Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and what he had said to them in the letter he wrote on the subject. Mr. Clemens' secretary told the reporters that the humorist had thrown away Dante's inferno, which he had been reading, when he learned of the ban on his books in Brooklyn. Then he proceeded to tell a story he knew of an Englishman who bettered a story. Here is the story, as the secretary told it. There was once a wicked man who stayed late at his club. His wife had a cuckoo clock. As he entered the door he heard it sound twice, and on his own account added more cuckoos. When he awoke in the morning he was happy in the belief that his wife had been deceived into thinking he had got home by twelve o'clock. Now this story was told by an American to an Englishman, who, lacking a sense of humor, insisted on telling the sequel. It was to the effect that the two lively gentlemen learned from his spouse when he complained about not being wakened in time that she had been out on an errand. During the night she had heard the clock cuckoo and decided that it had the hiccups, so she had taken it to the clockmaker. The doctor, who was summoned after this story, said that his patient was doing very well indeed. The fact that Mr. Hill had refused to give out the letter in regard to the edict against Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer made it impossible for Mr. Clemens secretary to make it public, the communication being personal. End of Section 114, March 27, 1906, Never Too Ill for a Story, Read by John Greenman Section 115 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 4, 1900-1906 This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman March 30, 1906, Arms to Free Russia, Tchaikovsky's Appeal And, Twain and Chote talk at meeting for blind. Arms to Free Russia, Tchaikovsky's Appeal, Revolutionist speaks to cheering audience of 3,000, says the battle is near. Mark Twain writes that he hopes Tsars and Grand Dukes will soon become scarce. This article has been edited to include only the portion related to Mark Twain's letter. Tavareshi! When Nicholas Tchaikovsky, hailed by his countrymen here as the father of the revolutionary movement in Russia, spoke this word last night, in Grand Central Palace, 3,000 men and women rose to their feet, waved their hats, and cheered madly for three minutes. The word means Comrades. It is the watchword of the revolutionists. The spirit of revolution possessed the mass meeting called to greet the Russian patriot now visiting New York. Fight is what he wants, and arms to fight with. He told the audience so last night, and by their cheers they promised to do their part in supplying the sinews of war. Robert Hunter was to have presided at the meeting, but the birth of a child to his wife kept him away. The audience cheered loudly when Paul Kaplan, who took the chair, told why Mr. Hunter wasn't there. Mark Twain could not attend because he had already accepted an invitation to another meeting, but he sent this letter. Dear Mr. Tchaikovsky, I thank you for the honor of the invitation, but I am not able to accept it, because Thursday evening I shall be presiding at a meeting whose object is to find remuneration for certain classes of our blind, who would gladly support themselves if they had the opportunity. My sympathies are with the Russian Revolution, of course. It goes without saying. I hope it will succeed, and now that I have talked with you, I take heart to believe it will. Government by falsified promises, by lies, by treachery, and by the butcher-knife for the aggrandizement of a single family of drones, and its idle and vicious kin, has been born quite long enough in Russia, I should think. And it is to be hoped that the roused nation, now rising in its strength, will presently put an end to it, and set up the Republic in its place. Some of us, even the white-headed, may live to see the blessed day when the Tsar and Grand Dukes will be as scarce there as I trust they are in heaven. Most sincerely yours, Mark Twain. Twain and Chote talk at meeting for blind. Humorist, sightless once, in a vast German inn. Hit at ghost, broke mirror. Mr. Chote urges liberal contributions. Mr. Gilder writes a poem, and Helen Keller a letter. A new poem by Richard Watson Gilder, a striking letter from Helen Keller, an appeal for funds by Joseph H. Chote, and a funny story by Mark Twain, made up the program of the meeting held in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria last night by the New York State Association for promoting the interests of the blind. The new Gilder poem was printed on the programs. Here it is. Pity the blind. Yes, pity those, whom day and night enclose in equal dark, to whom the sun's keen flame and pitchy nighttime are the same. But pity most the blind, who cannot see that to be kind is life's felicity. Mr. Clemens presided over the meeting and told the story of when he was hopelessly blind for a space of about two hours. I have a mess of statistics here," he said to the large audience, filling the boxes and seats on the ballroom floor. But I am afraid of them because I was never able to do much with that rugged study, mathematics. I can only figure on the multiplication table up to seven times nine, which is eighty-four. I can't even figure on the name of the society it is so long. I would write it out for you to take home with you, but I can't spell it, and Andrew Carnegie is somewhere down in Virginia. This association needs fifteen thousand dollars, and we may be able to collect it here. There is no graft in it, or I would not be presiding. I know what it is to be blind. I was blind once. It occurred after an excursion from Heidelberg to a medieval town about twenty miles away. The Reverend Joe Twitchell of Hartford was with me. He is still living. I always like a minister with me on an excursion. He makes a fine lightning rod for such excursions as the one we made. We went up by rail, and circumstances were such as to bring us back on a raft. In this ancient town, which had not altered a building or put up a new one in one thousand years, we had a room for the night, which was as large as the beds were small. We had to sleep on our sides in the beds. Twitchell's bed was way down south in that room, and mine was furthest north. I couldn't sleep after the light was put out, and finally decided to leave the room and go into the square and sit on the edge of a tinkling fountain. Off in the south-west of that room a mouse got busy, and I threw something at it. It pleased the mouse, and it kept on making a noise. I couldn't stand it with the other occasional noises in the room. The darkness of that room lay in great cakes. I got out of bed and clawed around in an endeavor to accumulate my clothes. I got most of the things in the room in a pile, save one sock. I began to hunt that sock. On hands and knees I crawled for three hours. I might have concluded that the sock was in the wash and saved myself some adventures, but I did not think of that. I remembered distinctly that there were six chairs and a table in that room before I went to bed, but I butted thirty-six chairs and enough tables to fill the dining room of the Waldorf. Finally I decided to stand up in what clothes I had on me. I saw a shadowy form, and I had no intention of letting any ghost bite me without a struggle. I took one of the thirty-six chairs and smashed it. It was a mirror. Then I reflected. I got back on my hands and knees and traveled a few more miles of this Oklahoma of a room. Finally I reached a wall and stood up again. I felt a shelf. I was delighted. It was the first encouragement I had received. I was then certain that I had not passed the city limits. On the shelf was a pitcher of water. I groped for it and it fell. It fell on Joe Twitchell's face. It nearly drowned Twitchell, but it brought me the glad relief of company. When he struck a match I got back to bed. I have never found the sock, but the hours of darkness I experienced in the explorations in that room were not empty hours. They served their purpose. The Reverend Joe Twitchell had longer legs than I, and we both wore pedometers on that trip. As I walk in my sleep I always wore mine to bed with me. When I got up in the morning I found that I had gained sixteen miles on Twitchell. Again my reflecting after the mirror incident made me remember to tell the landlord that Twitchell had broken it. Mr. Clemens introduced Mr. Chote, saying that for the forty-seven years he had known him, familiarly, he had known him as the handsomest man America had ever produced, and he believed he would hold the belt for forty-five years more. If I could say the word that would elevate him still higher in the esteem of his people, said Mr. Clemens, I would say it now. However untruthful it might be. Mr. Chote said that the chairman of the meeting had not acted squarely. He and the other speakers had been told just what to say in their speeches, but Mark Twain had rambled off to Nuremberg in his remarks. Mr. Clemens and I, he said, have seen enough money eaten, drunk, and danced away in this room to put the society on its feet. Put your names to the slips on the program for the contributions. Get enthusiastic about those slips, but do not get hysterical. There has been much said about hysterical attitudes in the last few days, and I don't know whether it would be creditable for you to get hysterical. In her letter of regret at not being able to attend the meeting, Miss Keller wrote, Of late our periodicals have been filled with depressing revelations of great social evils. Careless critics have pointed to every flaw in our civic structure. You once told me you were a pessimist, Mr. Clemens, but great men are usually mistaken about themselves. You are an optimist. If you were not, you would not preside at this meeting. For it is an answer to pessimism. It proclaims that the heart and the wisdom of a great city are devoted to the good of mankind. That in this, the busiest city in the world, no cry of distress goes up but receives a compassionate and generous answer. End of Section 115, March 30, 1906. Arms to Free Russia, Tchaikovsky's appeal, and Twain and Chote, talk at meeting for blind. Read by John Greenman. Section 116 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 3, 1906, Mark Twain Letter Sold. Written to Thomas Nast, it proposed a joint tour. A Mark Twain autograph letter brought forty-three dollars yesterday at the auction by the Merwin Clayton Company of the library and correspondence of the late Thomas Nast cartoonist. The letter is nine pages octavo, is dated Hartford, November 12, 1877, and is addressed to Nast. It reads in part as follows. Hartford, November 12. My dear Nast, I did not think I should ever stand on a platform again until the time was come for me to say I die innocent. But the same old offers keep arriving that have ariven every year and been every year declined. Five hundred dollars for Louisville, five hundred dollars for St. Louis, one thousand dollars gold for two nights in Toronto, half gross proceeds for New York, Boston, Brooklyn, etc. I have declined them all, just as usual, though sorely tempted as usual. Now I do not decline because I mind talking to an audience, but because, one, travelling alone is so heart-breaking dreary, and two, shouldering the whole show is such cheer-killing responsibility. Therefore I now propose to you what you propose to me in November 1867, ten years ago, when I was unknown, these that you should stand on the platform and make pictures, and I stand by you and blackguard the audience. I should enormously enjoy meandering around to big towns. Don't want to go to little ones. With you for company. The letter includes a schedule of cities and the number of appearances planned for each. End of Section 116, April 3, 1906, Mark Twain Letter Sold. Read by John Greenman. Section 117 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 4, 1906, Mark Twain talks to college women, says he'll only speak to alumni after this, tells that twitchle story. Five hundred women shook hands with him and showered him with pretty speeches. The Women's University Club and Mark Twain entertained each other yesterday, the club gave a reception with the author as the guest of honor, and the entire club and a good many of its relatives and friends turned out to meet him. There were five hundred of them at least, and each one had something to say to Mr. Clemens when she shook hands with him. Someone who was looking on said that a good many repeated and went up twice to shake hands. Mr. Clemens in the course of a long life has had other experiences in which college girls have had a part and he was somewhat reminiscent. The girls he talked to yesterday were some of them grandchildren of other girls he had met in other days. I don't have to say anything do I, said one girl who had not been able to think up an interesting remark as she shook hands with the guest of honor. No indeed, said Mr. Clemens, I'm shy that way myself. I have been waiting since I was three years old for this, said another girl. It was as long ago as that that my father pointed out the picture in innocence abroad to me. I bring a message from two little girls," said an older woman. They want you to write another story as nice as The Prince and the Pauper and send them the first copy," and Mark Twain gaily promised that he would. Mr. Clemens had promised to speak at the club, but having a cold asked to be excused. He was persuaded, however, to tell a yarn. They brought in a little platform that had been in readiness for the address, but he was not satisfied with it. I don't think that is high enough," he said, because I can't tell what people are thinking unless I see their faces. Then at his request they brought a chair, which was placed on the platform, and he stood on it. The veteran author never spoke to a more appreciative audience. I am not here, young ladies, to make a speech," he said, but what may look like one in the distance? I don't dare to make a speech, for I haven't made any preparations. And if I tried it on an empty stomach, I mean an empty mind, I don't know what iniquity I might commit. On the nineteenth of this month at Carnegie Hall I am going to take formal leave of the platform for ever and ever, as far as appearing for pay is concerned, and before people who have to pay to get in. But I have not given up for other occasions. I shall now proceed to infest the platform all the time under conditions that I like. When I am not paid to appear, and when no one has to pay to get in, and I shall only talk to audiences of college girls. I have labored for the public good for many years, and now I am going to talk for my own contentment." Then Mr. Clemens told his yarn. It was a yarn about a walking tour with the Reverend Joseph Twitchell that the public has found entertaining. The college women appeared to be entertained by it. End of Section 117, April 4, 1906, Mark Twain talks to college women, read by John Greenman. Section 118 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by John Greenman. April 6, 1906, Mark Twain on J. W. Foley says the schoolboy is a public pet and a pioneer of spelling reform. Mark Twain in Harper's Weekly. A year and a quarter ago Mr. Foley began to do schoolboy poems in a fire-new and blood-curdling and criminal fashion of spelling which no self-respecting I could endure at first. It was phonetics carried to the uttermost limit of exactness in the reproduction of sound effects. The public felt deeply outraged, and there was a smell of insurrection in the air, a quite justifiable condition of things too. For the poems looked like the alphabet hiccuping home in disorderly squads, a most painful and irritating spectacle. But I ask you, what has become of that insurrection? No man knows. It disappeared and left no sign. For the public had done the fatal thing. It kept on reading the poems in order to curse the spelling, and of course the natural thing happened. Familiarity with the spelling modified the reader's hostility to it, then reconciled him to it, and at last made him fall in love with it. Now, well, now Mr. Foley's schoolboy is a pet. End of Section 118, April 6, 1906, Mark Twain on J. W. Foley, read by John Greenman. Section 119 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part IV, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. April 8, 1906, Twain and Sir Purden, Lord Smith graduates, edited to include only Twain material. Humorist elected annual guest of the College Club here, Gala Day at Hotel Aster. Miss Peck says she will climb the highest mountain on this hemisphere. The New York Alumni of Smith College, the Smith College Club of New York, held its eleventh annual luncheon at the Hotel Aster yesterday afternoon with many interesting events. The first was the election by acclamation of Mark Twain as the annual guest of the club. Mr. Clements, sick, is not making speeches at the girls' clubs he visits nowadays. He tells a story, and they let him off at that. Yesterday he told the always interesting one of taking a girl to the theatre and of his tight shoes, and how he walked gallantly home with the shoes on one arm and the girl on the other. But Mark Twain can't tell a story and nothing else, so he had to tell the Smith girls just how nice he thought them. When I come to a gathering like this, he said, I feel that I should like to be an aspirant for political honours. I should like to be elected the Bell of New York so that I could come to these luncheons all the time. Then it was that the girls rose en masse, created a new office, and elected Mark Twain as annual guest to fill it. And the annual guest, who had talked at bouillon time that he might get off early, went away and didn't take luncheon with the girls at all. Sir Casper Purden Clark spoke at the regular speech-making time at the end of the dinner, and it was then that he told the Smith girls that he would have to apologise to them because a good many years ago he had crossed the ocean on purpose to see Smith College as a sample of what might be done with an English girl's college, and had then found Wellesley so satisfactory that after visiting Vassar he had gone home without seeing Smith at all. I had come to study colleges architecturally and not institutionally," he said, and I thought Wellesley, representing the ideas of women, could not be improved upon. The Smith girls applauded heartily. Mark Twain, said Sir Purden, in closing his remarks, is, I think, better known and better loved in England than he is here. He is one of the most lovable and best men in the world. Ender Section 119, April 8, 1906. Twain and Sir Purden. Loud Smith graduates. Read by John Greenman. Section 120 of Mark Twain in the New York Times Part IV. 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. This edited article includes only the portion most relevant to Mark Twain. Morning Star Winner in Billiard Opening. American Beats Curie, French expert in close match. Score 500 to 463 points. Big Tournament in Madison Square Garden Concert Hall starts. Mark Twain cheered. In a nervy finish, Aura Morning Star, the American, last night defeated Louis Curie, the French billiardist, by the score of 500 points to 463. The contest was the opening of the International Championship Tournament in the Concert Hall of Madison Square Garden. The ending was sensational. When Curie had turned into his final hundred, his score showed 410, while Morning Star's string was 287, a total of 123 behind the Frenchman. The latter appeared to have the game well in hand, and even a few innings later, Curie's score was 455 to Morning Star's 366. It was at this period that Morning Star began to demonstrate his skill and deafness at the rail nurse, combined with position play. A run of 27 indicated this, and two innings later a cluster of 55 placed him only 7 behind Curie. Then the latter missed because of nervousness, while Morning Star, playing phenomenal stroke, easily finished the winner with an average of 9, 14 to 54. Mark Twain, accompanied by Henry H. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company, was an interested spectator of the match. The American humorist busily explained the shots to his friend, accompanying his remarks with gestures and diagrams marked in the air with his fingers. He was alive with keen appreciation of the good shots and soon attracted the attention of the crowd. He left a few innings before the close of the match. Curie was at the table shooting when he went out, and the spontaneous outburst of cheering on the part of the crowd puzzled the Frenchman. Mark Twain saluted the spectators by throwing kisses to them, and when Curie saw this, he waved his hand to the retiring humorist and resumed his play. Section 120 April 10, 1906, Morning Star winner in billiard opening, read by John Greenman.